BEHIND THE SCENES

Writing may be my world, but visual creativity is my sister’s. She’s an incredibly talented graphic designer who now runs her own design team. She’s the kind of designer who can take a concept, a mood, or a scribbled idea and turn it into something polished, artistic, and meaningful.
Over the years, her talent has slipped more deeply into my work than even she may realize. From maps to book catalogs to character inspiration, her eye for detail and visual storytelling has influenced both my writing and the worlds I build. In Meridian File and Michelle’s Miracle, her creative spirit became part of my characters’ artistic identities.
This is the story of how her artistry helped shape mine.

🎨 My Sister’s Designs Behind the Scenes
I’ve been lucky to collaborate with my sister on a variety of projects—each one combining her visual creativity with my stories:
• Maps for My Worlds
When I needed maps—intricate, aesthetic, and evocative—my sister brought them to life. Her designs helped readers visualize the geography, the stakes, and the journeys written across my pages. (see map at top)
• My Book Catalog
Most recently, she created a gorgeous, streamlined book catalog for me. A catalog might sound simple on the surface, but her version turned into a visual story of my writing career—clean layouts, compelling images, and branding that feels cohesive and professional.
It’s one of those behind-the-scenes tools that makes authors look far more organized than we feel.

🎾 Graphic Design Meets Fiction: Amon in Meridian File
In Meridian File, one of the central characters, Aurora, is a graphic designer nearing the end of her tennis career and preparing to transition into art full-time. Her character was deeply inspired by watching my sister build her own graphic design career—balancing creativity, business, and passion.
Amon designs:

• wine labels for her family
• business cards for Maxine Rider
  and dreams of a life where her artistic voice becomes her full-time calling

It was a joy to write her because I could draw from a real-life example of artistic grit and success. Aurora’s love of color, layout, branding, and creative problem-solving all trace back to traits I’ve admired in my sister for years.

🎨 Art Inspiring Fiction: Michelle’s Miracle
In Michelle’s Miracle, a novella in Romancing the Spirit, the main character is an artist whose emotional and spiritual journey intertwines with her creative one. While crafting Michelle’s character, I drew heavily from the energy, focus, and artistic presence my sister embodies.
Michelle paints emotion, creating beauty from chaos. She sees the world differently—through hue, line, texture, and possibility.
Those traits come from years of watching my sister start with a blank canvas—literal or digital—and transform it into something that breathes.
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👩‍🎨 Creative Talent Runs In the Family… Even If It Shows Up Differently
My sister paints with pixels and color palettes. I paint with words and worlds.
But creativity is creativity—and having an artist in the family has shaped:

• my characters
• my storytelling
• my understanding of visual composition
• my appreciation for the design elements that accompany books (covers, maps, branding)

Even the way I think about scenes—imagining framing, contrast, light, texture—owes something to years spent watching her create.

Behind the Scenes: EMT-P

Before I was a physician, before I was a novelist weaving romance, danger, and adventure together—I was a paramedic.
Two years of intensive training, an associate degree, certification exams, and long shifts working through college shaped my worldview in ways I didn’t fully appreciate until many years later. The paramedic life is a strange mix of adrenaline and stillness, heartbreak and humanity. You see people on their worst days, and you learn quickly who you are when seconds matter.
Those experiences found their way into my writing—sometimes without me realizing it until a character came alive on the page with instincts, compassion, trauma, or grit that looked suspiciously like my past.
Here are a few places where the paramedic in me stepped out of memory and into fiction.
🚑 Rico in Cabrera File: Quick Thinking with a Big Heart
Rico didn’t start out as a character inspired by my paramedic days, but the moment he showed up on the page, he felt familiar. His compassion with victims, the way he always scans a room for danger or injury, the quiet confidence he uses to calm Diz during their frantic search for her kidnapped roommate… those traits come straight from the ambulance.
Paramedics learn:

• how to stay calm when emotions spike
• how to think two steps ahead while acting in the moment
• how to speak softly in a world full of chaos
• how to care for strangers without hesitation

Rico embodies all of that. He knows how to anchor others in crisis because he’s been forged by crisis. Writing him felt like returning to an old part of myself—one who ran into danger with a medical bag instead of a pen.
🚑 Raymond & Cathy in McMillan File: Street Medicine, Street Pain
Inner city EMTs and paramedics carry a particular weight—the weight of crime scenes, drug houses, domestic violence calls, and overdoses where you never forget the faces. Raymond and Cathy were inspired by the medics I knew and worked alongside.
Raymond. He’s bitter when we meet him—burned out, jaded, carrying anger that masks unresolved grief. Many real medics hit that wall. The job demands heart, but sometimes it breaks the very heart you give.
His arc is about rediscovering compassion… and finding someone who believes he can.
Cathy. She’s steady, warm, and quietly resilient. She sees Raymond slipping and refuses to let him drown in cynicism. She reminds him why he started this work in the first place: to help people, not judge them.
Their dynamic comes straight from ambulance life—the way partners become lifelines, mirrors, and sometimes the only person who truly understands what you carry after a twelve-hour shift.
💔 Terrible Tragedies, Incredible Moments
Being a paramedic meant witnessing some awful things—accidents, violence, loss that stays with you. But in the middle of those tragedies were moments of astonishing grace:

• a patient holding my hand in the ambulance because they were scared
  a family’s relief when their loved one woke up
• the quiet pride of knowing we made a difference, even when outcomes weren’t perfect

Those contrasts--darkness and light—cemented my commitment to medicine. I learned that healing isn’t always about curing. Sometimes it’s simply showing up when someone needs you most.
That emotional balance bleeds into my fiction. My characters fight, rescue, grieve, hope, and love because that’s what real people do, even in crisis.
🏥 The ER Showdown in McMillan File: Truth Wrapped in Fiction
One of my favorite behind-the-scenes stories is the scene where Raymond clashes with Dr. David Rider in the ER. Raymond calls in with a patient, confident in his street assessment and intended plan. Dr. Rider—sharp-edged, exhausted, and slightly arrogant—challenges him.
This exact dynamic is one I lived.
There’s sometimes tension between medics and ER physicians:

• who sees what
  who knows what
  who trusts whom

In the book, their initial interaction is bristling and skeptical. But when they end up delivering a baby in a cramped, dangerous apartment (pure fiction—but inspired by real-life “anything can happen” calls), they forge a bond built of adrenaline, trust, and shared purpose.
That’s the beauty of emergency work: pressure reveals character—sometimes good, sometimes messy, always real.
🔥 Fiction Born from Real-World Grit
My paramedic years were filled with long nights, broken hearts, moments of triumph, and flashes of deep humanity. Those years gave me:

• insight into trauma
• respect for first responders
• understanding of how people act under pressure
• a blueprint for how heroes rise—not with capes, but with courage

And those lessons walk beside every character I write—from Rico’s calm bravery to Raymond’s redemption to the life-and-death realism echoed in medical scenes throughout my books.
Being a paramedic didn’t just shape my writing.
It shaped me, and through me, every story I tell.

Louisiana will always hold a special place in my heart. I lived there from 4th grade through high school graduation, and later returned for paramedic school, spending two years immersed once again in the culture, rhythm, and spirit of the Deep South. It’s a state that imprints on you—lush, humid, fragrant, musical, mysterious, and endlessly alive.

Between rural southern Louisiana with its Creole flair and the energetic sprawl of Baton Rouge—a city built on grit, tradition, and good cheer (especially when LSU is winning!)—I grew up surrounded by stories begging to be told.

So when I wrote Allison’s Alibi, it felt only natural to return to the bayous, the French Quarter, and the Cajun countryside for inspiration. Louisiana’s rich flavors and shadows made the perfect backdrop for a romantic suspense with a paranormal twist.

Here’s the real-life Louisiana that helped build the fictional world of Allison’s Alibi.

🐊 Swamps, Spirits & Alligators: The Rural Heart of Louisiana
Living in rural southern Louisiana meant experiencing life closer to nature—and closer to mystery.

• I rowed a boat through alligator-infested waters, the surface rippling with quiet danger.
• I tasted the heat and sweetness of fresh crawfish boils surrounded by laughter, music, and the spice of Cajun cooking.
• I visited the Tabasco factory on Avery Island, where barrels of pepper mash ferment into the iconic Louisiana staple.
  I even toured the old leper colony in Carville, a historical site both heartbreaking and profoundly human.
  
  

These places shaped my understanding of Louisiana as a land where stories cling to every moss-draped branch and muddy bank. That eerie beauty and lived memory became the atmospheric backbone of Allison’s Alibi—a place where danger and destiny meet in equal measure.

🎭 The Magic & Mystery of New Orleans
Some of my favorite memories come from the city where history and celebration dance together:

• Beignets at Café du Monde, warm and powdered-sugar perfect
• Jackson Square, bursting with local artists, fortune tellers, and vibrant creativity
• The French Quarter, a maze of wrought iron balconies, ghost stories, jazz clubs, and secrets
  
  

New Orleans doesn’t just entertain—it enchants. And that enchantment flows straight into the book.

In Allison’s Alibi, the French Quarter’s haunting charm echoes through the psychic detective’s gifts, the ghost of Allison’s father, and the whispers of danger around every corner.

💜 Baton Rouge: Home of Grit, Gumbo, and Tiger Pride
Baton Rouge has personality. Big personality.
I spent years there for paramedic school, absorbing the energy of a city where:

• football ties the community together
• food brings families to the table
• and hospitality softens even the hardest days

The city’s atmosphere influenced the sharper edges of Allison’s Alibi—the police procedural elements, the academic world Allison inhabits as a researcher, and the simmering tension beneath the surface of everyday life.

🔮 How Louisiana Became the Soul of Allison’s Alibi
The story follows Allison, a researcher whose colleague is murdered—leaving her with no alibi and mounting evidence pointing her way. Louisiana’s mystique offered the perfect setting for a suspense story tinged with paranormal threads.
Enter: 
1) A psychic detective with seductive Southern flair Inspired by the charm and depth I saw in many Louisianans—equal parts easygoing and inscrutable.
2) The ghost of Allison’s father, a spectral presence shaped by Louisiana’s long tradition of reverence for the dead, spiritual storytelling, and the blurred line between this world and the next.
3) A killer hiding beneath Southern politeness. Because Louisiana hospitality is legendary… but its shadows are deep.

In this book, Louisiana is more than a location—it’s a character. It’s the humidity clinging to each scene, the heat fueling tension, the music vibrating beneath fear, the flavors woven into emotional beats, and the mystery rising from the swamp like morning fog.

​Writing Allison’s Alibi allowed me to relive the Louisiana I loved, feared, explored, and grew up in. It felt like coming home—but with a fictional twist and a dead body.

​Allison's Alibi

Why Atlanta Became Home to the Rider Team
Atlanta has been a recurring stop in my life—an energetic, sprawling Southern city I’ve visited more times than I can count. It’s a place steeped in culture, charm, grit, and international reach, blending modern skyscrapers with tree-lined neighborhoods, luxury dining with hole-in-the-wall gems, and small-town warmth with global influence.
So when I began crafting my romantic suspense series, The Rider Files, it wasn’t long before Atlanta became the perfect home base for Rider Security and Investigation. And the story behind choosing Atlanta is almost as fun as the series itself.

🍷 A Glass of Wine, a Conversation, and the Birth of the Rider Team
Years ago, over a quiet evening and a glass of wine, I told my husband I wanted to write a romantic suspense series centered on strong female characters—women who take charge, solve crimes, fall in love, and save lives.

He listened, smiled, and said, “Let’s build you a team.” That night, Rider Security and Investigation was born—named after Maxine Rider, retired Marine who built her company around diverse specialists and rooted it in a city big enough to house all their high-stakes missions.

My husband is from Atlanta, so as we talked, he sprinkled in stories, favorite spots, traffic disasters, hidden gems, and local color that helped shape the fictional landscape. It became a beautiful melding of memory, imagination, and partnership.

🌐 Why Atlanta Was the Perfect Setting for Rider Security
1. An International Hub
With Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport—one of the busiest airports in the world—the city provides seamless access for Rider’s operatives to jet off to trouble spots in:

• Europe
• Africa
• South America
• The West Coast
• The Caribbean
  
  

It made perfect sense for a private security firm with global clients and international missions.

2. A Blend of Grit and Glamour
Atlanta offers the right mix for suspense:

• sleek high-rises
• winding neighborhoods
• forested outskirts
• historic pockets
• gritty back alleys
• polished corporate districts
  
  

It’s a city of layers—ideal for chases, stakeouts, romantic interludes, and clandestine meetings.

3. Personal Connection
Being married to an Atlantan means Atlanta never feels generic to me. It feels lived-in. Loved. Familiar. And that authenticity trickles into the pages—locations feel real because they are real.

🍔 Favorite Atlanta Landmarks I’ve Featured (or Should!)
One of the best perks of setting a series in a city I know is weaving in the iconic spots I’ve visited, revisited, and fallen in love with.
✨ The Varsity
“What’ll ya have?”
A classic Atlanta staple—perfect for quick bites, undercover meets, or lighthearted moments between tense scenes.
✨ Bones Restaurant
Elegant, old-school, and the perfect place for Rider operatives to celebrate victories or conduct discreet negotiations over a world-class steak.
✨ Georgia Aquarium
With its breathtaking whale sharks and ethereal underwater tunnels, it provides the perfect backdrop for introspective scenes… or meet-cutes.
✨ World of Coca-Cola
A fun, colorful stop that blends nostalgia with whimsy—ideal for lighter moments in a high-stakes series.
✨ Piedmont Park
Scenic, sprawling, and a perfect place for outdoor scenes, quiet conversations, or unexpected plot twists.
✨ Centennial Olympic Park
Vibrant and full of history—its fountains and walkways bring energy and motion to any scene.
✨ Midtown & Buckhead
Trendy, modern, fast-paced areas filled with restaurants, offices, and upscale hotels—great for corporate intrigue or luxury-level suspense.
Atlanta lets me play with all these textures. And the Rider team thrives in that variety.

🔥 Atlanta in the Rider Files: More Than a Setting
In The Rider Files, Atlanta becomes:

• a strategic base
• a character in its own right
• a node connecting international missions
• the heart from which the Rider team operates
• a place where danger finds the team—and where love does too
  
  

It’s chaotic, charming, complex, and perfect for a suspense series built on action, emotion, and resilience.

And every time I write a new Rider story, I feel that same creative joy I felt years ago, sitting with my husband, dreaming up a team of powerful, brilliant women and the men who help—or try to keep up with—them.

Atlanta gave the Rider Files a home. And in return, I get to revisit the city again and again—on the page and in my memories.
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Check out the Rider Series!
ROMANTIC THRILLERS
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Once up a time, I was a teenager who fell in love with the world from the back of a horse. My after-school hours were spent with DeeDee, our sweet Arabian mare who tolerated my inexperience with saintly patience and delighted in learning new tricks.
Nothing felt more liberating than gripping the reins, leaning forward, and flying across a field with the wind in my face. That feeling—freedom, partnership, trust—became part of who I am, and inevitably, it found its way into my books.

Here’s how horses and horseback riding shaped my writing, my characters, and more than a few dramatic chase scenes.

🐎 My Riding Beginnings: DeeDee the Patient & Playful Arabian
DeeDee was my first real introduction to horse partnership. She was gentle, curious, and endlessly forgiving as I learned:

• balance
  leg cues
• the rhythm of a canter
• and the sheer joy of letting go and running like the wind

She also taught me humility—because even the sweetest horses have opinions. Once, in a rare stubborn moment, she backed into an electric fence. Startled, she bucked so hard that I landed on the ground with an ACL tear. A painful memory… but a formative one.
That mix of beauty and unpredictability is something I still weave into every horse scene I write.

🐎 Riding Through College, Medical School, and Beyond
My love of riding didn’t stop when life got busy. In college, a friend’s family owned horses and graciously let me ride. Later, the owner of the paramedic company I worked for kept several horses and also opened their pastures to me. Even in medical school, I somehow lucked into friends who welcomed me into their barns.

These experiences gave me exposure to different horses, personalities, and challenges:

#Henry – The Clumsiest Horse I’ve Ever Met
Henry tripped constantly. Once, he stumbled so spectacularly that we both ended up in the mud in an undignified heap. We were fine—just muddy and laughing—but it’s a reminder that even sure-footed animals have their off days.

#Baby – The Spooky Speedster
Baby had a reputation for meanness, and it took four months of steady groundwork before I finally rode her outside the corral. The victory was short-lived: a flock of birds burst from the trees, Baby bolted for the barn, and when I tried to rein her in, she bucked up a 45-degree incline.

I flew over her head and landed flat on my back. Shaking, sore, and adrenaline-filled, I climbed back on to ride her around the corral once--because you always get back on.
And then I never rode Baby again.

Those experiences—sweet, funny, terrifying, empowering—shaped the way I write riders and horses alike: with respect for the animal, awareness of danger, and appreciation for the exhilaration.

🐎 Where You’ll Find Horseback Riding in My Books
If you love horseback scenes as much as I do, you’ll spot them galloping through several of my stories—sometimes dramatic, sometimes romantic, sometimes downright cinematic.

Black Gold
Lillian makes a brave, desperate dash on horseback to escape oil thieves in Kenya. It’s one of the most adrenaline-fueled moments in the book, blending fear, freedom, and raw survival as she rides for her life.

Sharp File
Santino delivers a spectacular riding sequence inspired by The Man From Snowy River—one of my all-time favorite movies. It’s bold, daring, and a little swoon-worthy, showcasing both his horsemanship and heroic streak.

Sky Fall (Shadow Guardians, Book 3)
Sky rides into the final showdown with Hel atop her loyal horse Thunder across Iceland’s wild landscape. Their bond—built from trust to battle—makes this moment powerful, emotional, and mythic.

Gray Horizon
Jonathan (Lillian’s brother) pulls off a high-speed horseback escape through Paris, very much in the spirit of True Lies(yes, that scene). It’s cinematic, chaotic, and one of my favorite action moments.

Rosalyn’s Run (a Shadow Guardians novella)
In one of my favorite twists, Rosalyn is literally a shape-shifting horse, rescuing Apollo from the clutches of Hel herself. It’s magical, fierce, and probably the most literal example of “horse girl energy” I’ve ever written.

Winds of Destiny, Olympian Awakenings
And then there’s Tyler, our resident shapeshifter… who becomes a horse for Layla to ride. But that’s not all he becomes. Let’s just say his talents go well beyond the stable… 😉 You’ll have to read the series to find out.

From Kenyan plains to Icelandic battlefields to Parisian chaos and mythic transformations, horses keep showing up in my stories because they represent everything I love in fiction: freedom, danger, loyalty, beauty, and the thrill of running headlong into the unknown.
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And honestly? I don’t think I’ll ever stop writing them in.

The Storm Behind Sabrina’s Storm
Some stories come from imagination. Others come from experience. Sabrina’s Storm came from both: the eerie beauty of the North Carolina coast and the unforgettable experience of living through a hurricane as a child.

Before I ever wrote Sabrina Morningstar, before Grant Dalton ever stepped onto the page with his skeptical charm, I knew exactly what a hurricane felt like—its sound, its violence, its aftermath. Those memories shaped every wind-lashed scene in Sabrina’s Storm, and they remain among the most vivid of my life.
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Here is the behind-the-scenes inspiration that breathed realism—and fear—into my coastal romantic suspense.

🌪 My Hurricane Memory: Living Through Hurricane Andrew
I grew up in Louisiana, and in August of 1992, Hurricane Andrew tore through the region with the full force of a Category 3 storm. Even now, decades later, I can still feel the dread of that moment when the world goes strangely quiet… right before the winds begin to roar.

Towering pine trees—ones I thought immovable—bent in wide, unnatural arcs. The wind howled like something alive, a constant unrelenting force pounding the world outside. Part of our barn roof ripped away, the metal screaming as it peeled.

We ran on generator power for three days, rationing fuel and trying to pretend the candlelight was cozy rather than necessary. When the storm finally passed, flooding locked us in place, turning roads into brown churning rivers.

We were well prepared. We were safe. But it was still terrifying. That primal mix of awe and fear—the knowledge that nature can take and break and bend at will—never leaves you. And it became the emotional foundation of Sabrina’s Storm.

🏚 The Setting: A Haunted House on the NC Coast
When I created Sabrina Morningstar, I placed her in a secluded beach house on the North Carolina shoreline—a home rumored to be haunted, a place she chose specifically because no one else wanted it.

Here, she welcomes the solitude, hides from her past, and lets the ocean drown out everything she doesn’t want to remember.

Until Grant Dalton arrives.

Grant is a ghost hunter whose job is to debunk hauntings, not validate them. He comes to Sabrina’s home expecting fog machines and flickering lights. What he finds instead are events even he can’t explain.

And amid their unraveling truths and rising tensions, a hurricane spins toward them—an unstoppable force echoing the one I lived through.

💀 The Poetic Thread: The Mariner’s Albatross
Throughout Sabrina’s Storm, I wove in lines from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the haunting Coleridge poem about sin, fate, and the symbolic albatross.
The poem becomes:

• a chilling echo of Sabrina’s guilt
• a literary rhythm that heightens the atmosphere
• an omen that parallels the approaching storm
• and ultimately, a guide toward redemption

Using those snippets gave the book a poetic eeriness, a lyrical undercurrent beneath the thunder and fear. The albatross haunts the pages as much as any ghost—until the final light begins to break.

🌩 From Real Hurricane to Fictional Storm
Writing Sabrina’s Storm meant returning to that childhood memory of Hurricane Andrew—the fierce winds, the cracking trees, the flashlight-lit nights. It meant imagining what it would be like to face that kind of danger again… only this time with ghosts, trauma, and unexpected love tangled in the tempest.

Sabrina’s storm is literal and emotional. Grant’s storm is existential. And together, they discover that survival requires not only strength but trust. My hope is that readers feel the poetic dread, the rising fear, the electric chemistry, and finally, the relief of sunlight after the longest night.
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If you’ve ever stood on a coastline and felt the wind shift… you know storms can change you. This one certainly changed my characters. And writing it brought me full circle from Louisiana’s hurricane-swept pines to a haunting tale on the NC shore.

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